Toyota: New 'Supra' coming soon

The man responsible for developing the highly-anticipated successor to the Toyota Supra has promised it will shock and surprise.

Tetsuya Tada, Toyota's head of sports car development and the man credited for the 86, spoke to Australian media overnight at the 2015 Tokyo motor show, revealing the latest information on the long-awaited sports coupe.

Tada confirmed his plan is for Toyota to offer a sports car line up of "three brothers" - a small coupe based on the S-FR concept, the 86 as the middle brother and the new 'Supra' the big brother.

But while the big brother is unlikely to carry the Supra name it will try and capture the spirit of the car.

"I don't know the name," Tada said. "But Supra is the heritage of Toyota sports, therefore Supra has a good image and direction."

Toyota has been working on the project for several years in partnership with German brand BMW. The Japanese company gave the first suggestion of its idea for the car the 2014 Detroit motor show, when it revealed the FT-1 concept.

Without giving away any too many specifics Tada suggested the car would be unlike any other sports car, boasting new hybrid powertrain technology never used before by Toyota.

"You've already checked Honda's next generation NSX," he explained. "It already announced many future technologies for hybrid sports [cars]. With Toyota also already has many investigations into that technology.

"Hybrid technology is key technology for Toyota. We release hybrid sports [cars] in the market, we must provide something new, something wow, a surprise."

Asked if that meant electric turbocharging Tada dismissed the concept.

"Also not so much a surprise," he said.

But he stressed that hybrid technology was important for the car, as it would be a flagship for the brand that has become synonymous with hybrid vehicles.

"That is one of the really important technologies for the car. That is why we try to change the mind with hybrid engines," he explained.

Asked whether a larger electric motor or combustion engine was better for sports cars Tada said: "That's a good question. We have tried many different types of combinations."

Pushed to reveal which was best he only revealed: "It depends. For only track use I already made a solution, but people expect many road conditions not only track. It all depends what kind of situation the customer wants to drive."

But Tada played down the car packing power to rival European supercars.

"Now there are so many high-end sports [cars] in the world. Now 700 or 800-horsepower is not so special," he said.

"Power is not so important for customers already. So what is the new shock and new surprise for customers? That is really important and difficult to make. We try to realise something new, a new surprise for customers. Nobody expects, nobody [will] match the technology… Nobody imagine."

Tada did reveal that he considers the Porsche 911 the benchmark sports car and when asked if the new coupe could match the German car he didn't hesitate.

"Yeah," he said.

He added: "Big brother will have amazing performance."

And while Tada suggested it is likely to be a hardtop coupe, he didn't rule out something very different - a single door.

"All the real sports cars make no sense. How about one door? One door makes it very good for rigidity and lightweight," he said.

But asked if it was technically possible: "I think so. One door. No door."

As for when the car will appear Tada revealed a new concept is likely to arrive sometime in 2016 but he won't give any specifics on the production car.